Our T-Mobile Garminfone review is up – buy the phone starting June 9 for $199.99

I just posted our full review of the Garmin Garminfone for T-Mobile on MobileBurn.com. Todd Haselton wrote the review for us, and he really likes the device – in spite of the fact that he expected to not like it at all.

On a related note, T-Mobile has also just announced that the Garminfone will be available to customers on June 9th for $199.99 after a $50 rebate.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first Garmin-ASUS device, the nuvifone, launched on a U.S. carrier, and so I came into this Garminfone review not knowing what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised by the build quality of the phone and its ease of use. Every time I carried it I thought of how much it could help a businessperson in a new city try to get around. It’s also fun for other things. One day my girlfriend and I took it out to make an attempt at geo-caching using some coordinates we found online. We gave up since it’s a bit tough in New York City, but it was still a fun experience navigating around by foot through streets and parks.

The good call quality and reasonable battery life also help make the Garminfone solid. Those are usually the two biggest reasons I’ll quickly lose interest in a device, and I was pleased that I could get through a day just fine. The camera could have been a bit better, and I wish there was a little more customization in the user interface, but generally I thought it works well and is one of the better UI overlays out there. The Garminfone really does need a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, though.

If you find yourself driving or traveling a lot, you should consider the Garminfone. It’s navigation features are more robust than the software that’s built into Android, and it comes with a bonus car kit. Anyone on T-Mobile who is looking for a social-networking or multimedia device should consider other phones like the CLIQ or CLIQ XT, which offer a better social networking experience, but if you don’t care about those features, the Garminfone is a pretty stellar device.